New Genetic Advances in Breast Cancer Diagnosis
April 4, 2011 -- New research on the genetic causes of breast cancer could change the way the disease is diagnosed and treated in the not-too-distant future, according to new research.
The findings, if validated, may help doctors avoid some of the guesswork involved in matching treatments to tumors. That could increase the odds that a therapy will work and decrease its side effects. This is known as personalized medicine, and many believe it will shape how all diseases are treated.
The study findings are being presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla.
“We need to completely redo the way we treat cancer and we have to start with a genomic approach,” says researcher Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “An accurate diagnosis based on the cancer genome can eliminate all this trial and error medicine. There are a whole lot of other opportunities that we are ignoring because we didn’t get the diagnosis right in the first place.”
Slideshow: A Visual Guide to Breast Cancer
The findings, if validated, may help doctors avoid some of the guesswork involved in matching treatments to tumors. That could increase the odds that a therapy will work and decrease its side effects. This is known as personalized medicine, and many believe it will shape how all diseases are treated.
The study findings are being presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla.
“We need to completely redo the way we treat cancer and we have to start with a genomic approach,” says researcher Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “An accurate diagnosis based on the cancer genome can eliminate all this trial and error medicine. There are a whole lot of other opportunities that we are ignoring because we didn’t get the diagnosis right in the first place.”
Slideshow: A Visual Guide to Breast Cancer
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